John Strupat is a retired respiratory therapist. He made the decision to open source his design after failing to get any kind of serious consideration to make the life-saving device from federal governments in Canada or the United States.

Here is a write-up form the Canadian press
"Strupat is making his design open source at a critical time, as hospitals brace for a potential surge of Canadian COVID-19 cases and with it a cruel reckoning: there may be not enough ventilators to go around if the infection rate spirals out of control like it has in Italy or Spain. "